Performance Testing and System Setup

Now that we have looked at the features that NVIDIA’s new platforms offer the user, we will turn to what performance they can offer as well.  Since we are in fact previewing two seperate chipsets for two seperate system platforms, we’ll have two sections of benchmarks: one for the Athlon XP nForce2 Ultra 400 Gb and another for the Athlon 64 nForce3 250 Gb.

nForce2 Ultra 400 Gb – The last hurrah for the Athlon XP as we know it?

Our benchmarks for the Athlon XP platform will be short and sweet, as there was no modification to the north bridge part of the chipset, and thus performance is unchanged from its predecessor, the original nForce2 Ultra 400. 

Here is the system setup for our benchmarks on this platform:

Athlon XP Test System Setup

CPU

 Athlon XP 3200+ @ 2.2 GHz

Motherboards

NVIDIA nForce2 Ultra 400 Gb Reference Board
Asus A7N8X Deluse nForce2 Ultra 400 Motherboard

Power Supply 

Antec 550W TrueControl

Memory 

2x512MB Corsair PC3200LL Pro Series

Hard Drive

40GB 7200RPM Western Digital EIDE

Sound Card

Creative Labs Live!

Video Card

ATI Radeon 9800XT

Video Drivers

ATI Catalyst 3.10

DirectX Version

DX 9.0b

Operating System

Windows XP w/ Service Pack 1

nForce3 250 Gb – NVIDIA’s 2nd try for the Athlon 64

Because we did see good performance gains going from the nForce3 150 to the nForce3 250 chipset, we’ll be showing you the full range of benchmarks for this platform. 

Here is the system setup for those benchmarks:

Test System Setup

CPU

 Athlon 64 3400+ @ 2.2 GHz
Athlon 64 3200+ @ 2.9 GHz (on Chaintech Board)

Motherboards

NVIDIA nForce3 250 Gb Reference Motherboard
Asus SK8V K8T800 Motherboard
Chaintech ZNF3-150 nForce3 150 Motherboard

Power Supply 

Antec 550W TrueControl

Memory 

2x512MB Corsair PC3200LL Pro Series

Hard Drive

40GB 7200RPM Western Digital EIDE

Sound Card

Creative Labs Live!

Video Card

ATI Radeon 9800XT

Video Drivers

ATI Catalyst 3.10

DirectX Version

DX 9.0b

Operating System

Windows XP w/ Service Pack 1

« PreviousNext »